Through the Fire and the Flames
by OCAdam
Summary: A nuclear test facility has exploded, forcing people to evacuate. And among them, a guard from that facility who is figuring out the atrocities caused by the explosion, only to be thrust into a battle for survival. Chapter 5 is up!
1. Intro Chapter

Through the Fire and the Flames

Chapter 1: Introduction

--

Before story notes: I'm making this story as my own personal enjoyment (Jerry: With all this gore?) to rest from my previous attempts at a good story, and now I'm just gonna write a completely new plotline.

You won't be able to recognize much of anything, since I'm adding in many new things to the original stuff that was in both the games and comics. This is more of a main story to a new story, and I might have some side stories to complement this one, but don't count on it.

Jerry: -looking at script- I have to WHAT!

Shut up, you're giving stuff away.

Jerry: I don't care, I think you've gone off the deep end this time man!

Well, I've only been diving into 2 foot pools in my previous attempts, so I don't want to keep hitting my damn head! Now, shut up and go do your part!

Jerry: Fine man, I'm gone... -walks away-

Stupid cat... and no, you won't see Jerry until a long time from now.

--

A new city was constructed recently, and I've been relocated to there after the 'incident'. No thanks to the original city being evacuated after a failed experiment... I used to work for a nuclear testing company named Terrascape Nuclear Research Facilties. They were testing out how to use nuclear atoms to create a weapon capable of breaking the fusion of molecule bondings in organic objects, and ended up blowing up the entire facility.

That includes all of the other nuclear reactors. Many people died in that explosion, but the hazardous waste cleanup crew was able to clean out the air of the nuclear fallout. That's when people started mutating into horrible monsters, and we were all ordered to evacuate to this new city.

Trains piled full of people transported us to this place, and quite frankly, we were lucky to get away from that place. The monsters had started to mutilate remaining people and then eat their insides. I had been lucky myself to escape one of these beings by hiding in a dumpster full of trash. I had barely caught the last train to the new city, named Dutropolis. Who ever makes these kinds of names must have randomly used letters from the alphabet if you asked me.

I barely remember much, but I had been a guard at the facility when the explosions happened. I don't know if I might turn into one of those creatures since I was right there at the facility when it went in smokes, quite literally too. I've heard of some cases of people who worked at the plant had weird mutations unlike the ones outside the facilty. These mutations were much less sever somehow.

Some of my friends died there, and one of my surviving friends now is in a hospital since he had his arm chopped off by a falling peice of machinery during the mass chaos. Another had the mutation of elongated fingers, and one even had gotten elf-like ears on herself. One report of a mutation on a scientist had been he now could see much farther than any normal human being.

The new apartments they put us in are a lot better than the ones back in Robotropolis, but just don't seem to be as comforting. Maybe it's just from all the rush with this new city being all... new. The only other thing I remember from before the incident was my own name. But even that has gotten fuzzy for me to remember. I guess my mutation was to forget a lot of stuff. But that's enough about me, since I can't remember anything else really. It's all just a huge blur of blood, gore, and violence.

Really, this is becoming too much for me. Since I can't remember my name that well, I've decided to come up with my own name now. William Foster.


	2. False Security

Through the Fire and the Flames

Chapter 2

--

I've only really begun to venture from my house, but at least it's a start. I've seen reports of people rioting, and massive casulties from their being killed because of many having weapons to try and start a rebellion against our so called 'leader'. My amnesia is so bad that I don't remember what his name was. The news doesn't even say his name either, so that's not really helping much.

---

(Somewhere in Dutropolis, nearing noon)

William walked outside of his house for a moment to catch some fresh breath when he started to notice things that seemed more out of place than usual. There was a group of soldiers surrounding what seemed like a smaller group of anthropomorphic animals. William tried to look closer, and he saw the soldiers were about to fire on the animals.

Quickly, and instinctively, William ran down the stairs to the ground floor to stop the soldiers from slaughtering the group of animals. He reached the plaza just in time to get to shout, "Stop! WHat the hell are you doing?"

The soldiers lowered their guns and reaimed at William. The leader stood forward and told William that, "These animals are wanted by the master. Now, stand back and don't try to stop us."

"Make me, " William said defiantly, seething with anger at these soldiers' merciless attitudes to who William only knew were about to be taken in by their 'master'.

"Don't make me do this, but I can order my men to fire on you if you don't comply!" The squad all trained their guns directly at William, but he stood his ground. "Fine, I'm sorry, but you give me no choice. Fire at will!"

The bullet seemed to come out of the guns at slow motion, and WIlliam tried to duck, when he realized something. _This is my mutation..._

With ease, William dodged all the bullets, and the entire squad stopped an just looked at him, dumbfounded. "He just dodged all our ing bullets!"

"He's got like, inhuman reflexes!"

"I'll get him!" The group's leader fired at William again, and again William used his slow mo reflexes to dodge again. This gave the group of animals time to escape and by the time the soldiers realized it, the group was out of sight. William smirked. "You're going down!"

"They're gone! The animals master wanted are gone!" This got the leader's attention, and as he look for the group, William ran for his life in the direction he saw the animals go. Unfortunately, the soldiers had a different idea. They shot again, and a few bullets grazed William's arm, and cried out in pain. He blacked out.

---

Flashes of images went through William's mind. He recognized none of them. It was like seeing someone else's life in fast-forwards, but he knew they were remnants of his old life. He saw an old lady, probably his mom, then an image of a small child and a toy the child had gotten for his birthday.

--

"Hey! Don't leave me here!" A voice yelled after a pretty young woman. William recognized the voice as a younger version of himself.

"It's not my fault you weren't there when I needed you most," The woman replied as she walked away.

--

"I can't take this much longer!" an even younger version of William cried out. This seemed to be when he was around 8 or 9 years old.

"Your father was a great man, and he died with honor." WIlliam's young self looked at his mom, who was now a young version of the old lady from a previous image.

"No he didn't! He was slaughtered by robots! That's not honorable!" The young William began to cry.

--

"Hey Joe! Look at this one!" A current day William voice rang in the real William's head.

"What is it?" Joe, a guard from William's old job asked as he looked into the bottle William held.

"It's one of those alien scorpion things they were experimenting on a few days ago!"

"Cool dude!"

--

"Wake up hunny!" William's mom said to the yound William. It was snowing outside, probably around Christmas.

"Did Santa come around yet?"

"Yes he did..."

---

"Wake up! Ugh, I tell you, he'd dead."

"No, I checked. He's got a pulse."

Wiliiam began to think, _This is a weird one that happened..._

"Just keep trying! He saved our lives, so we've got to save his! It's the least we could do..."

Williams suddenly remembered about the soldiers, the animals escaping, he getting shot and blacking out, and his eyes shot open.

"He's awake!"

Shouts rang through William's ears. _Someone's happy to see I'm still alive..._

"I told you he was alive!"

Hands helped William sit up, and he took in his surroundings. Muffled voices were coming from the room next to the one he was in.

"Hey, can you hear us?" Someone popped in William's face. It was an animal, one that looked familiar too. "It's a good thing you saved us from those soldiers back there! We thought you'd died after we heard those first gunshots! We did our best afterwards to save you from the soldiers."

"Fortunately, they were reloading when we attacked them, and we took 'em out real quick like man!" a cat interrupted the other animal, which William couldn't really recognize. It seemed like William was having more trouble with his amnesia than he though at first. Now he was starting to forget what animal types were standing in front of him. _That's not something good to forget..._

"Where.. am I?"


	3. Under Attack!

Through the Fire and the Flames

Chapter 3

---

"Where am I?"

William turn his head around the room, and stood up, but quickly fell back on his knees when he found that he was too weak to support hiself very well. A 3rd animal walked in to the room, and turned to William. "Hi. I'm Weston, I lead the rebellion forces here in this small cave. I heard you helped some of my comrades, am I right?"

"Yeah, some soldiers were going to bring them to their... master, whoever that is... I wasn't going to let them just walk away with the others I saved. It... was just instinctive," William answered Weston.

"You... don't know who their master is?"

"I have amnesia."

The leader looked taken back, "I'm sorry to hear this. I wish there was a way to help this..."

"No, don't worry, it's best I don't, I think."

"Err, if I may ask, why?" Weston walked over to William.

"I used to work at that nuclear testing facility as a guard before it exploded." William closed his eyes, trying to block out images of death happening back in Robotropolis.

"Did you? Hmm, so, you may have had connections to that Robotnik, right?"

"Wha? Who's he? And even if I remembered, a guard there knew only the other guards near his location. And maybe a few scientists in that sector of the facility. Only 3 of my friends lived..."

"Oh... I'm terribly sorry for asking such questions. But, we have to take every precaution around here for spies." Weston looked around the room quickly, and grabbed a vial. "Here, drink. This'll help on the weakness you feel."

William really couldn't refuse, so he took it and drank the fluid slowly. _At least it's not bitter..._

"You should feel the effects take place in about 15 minutes. Until then, you're still gonna need to rest. It's only a painkiller." Weston left the room.

"Man, that was a close call back there huh? By the way, what's your name? Mine's Jerry, Jerry Kalis. Don't ask, I don't even know where my last name is even from." Jerry said this, somehow, in a single breath.

"I really don't even know my real name. Only my first name, William. Until then, I'm just using the last name Foster." William layed back down on the ground.

"Sucks to not even know what your last name is man." Jerry walked towards the door. "Hey, I'll leave you alone so you get your rest, like Wes said."

"Wes?"

"We all nicknamed Weston Wes around here. I'll see ya later man." And with that, Jerry left the room.

"What's with him?" William asked the remaining animal, which now he remembered it to be a lion.

"Ah, he's just a bit on the hyper side today. Don't worry about Jerry though, he's usually a good guy to be around. Oh, I'm Carie Lios. So, you say you have amnesia, right?" Carie began.

"Yeah, at least, I think I do. I'm guessing you're a medic, right?"

"Yup! That's me! I just relocated from our island jungle location just last week, but since this new place needed a medic, they reassigned me here under Wes's unit. At least, he SAYS it's a unit. I think it's just a small crowd sometimes, especially since this is a cavern." Carie kept talking about the times she's had being a medic, and William tried to listen the best he could. But the painkiller seemed to also be one of the older ones that would put him to sleep nearly, unlike the ones he was used to.

"Got a question. You guys have more bases of operations?"

"Yup! Actually, I can't tell you too much about them, or..."

"I get it. It's not like you can trust a guy who you just met." The pain in William's arm was long gone, the painkillers doing their job, but William could still not move the arm, lest it hurt a lot. No painkiller could have taken that pain away, especially since this was about the only painkiller they had, at least William thought that they had.

A sound was heard several times outside the door, and there were a lot of shouts. "HEY! We're under attack!"

"We're surrounded!"

"Damn, they've found us!" Carie said softly as she looked at the door, expecting it to open at any second. It didn't. The sounds all ceased eventually, and only a few cies of pain were heard from then on. "I hope no one's dead."

"I'm gonna check it out."

"No! What if they spot you? They'll kill you for helping us earlier!" Carie attempted reasoning with William, but it didn't work too well on him. "Willy..."

"Sorry Carie, but this is my time to pay you guys back for helping me out after I was shot," William said as he walked out of the room. Almost immediately he ducked down to ensure he wasn't seen as easily. He may have only been a guard, but William was damn sure to use his training for this. Maybe he'd even pick up a few new moves to help him out.

Around a corner in the cavern he found 2 animals, a dog and a wolf, being held hostage by a single guard. Thinking quickly, William grabbed a rock, threw it at the room, and dashed to another entrance to the room. The guard went to investigate the location of where the rock was thrown from and William took this opportunity to dash in the room form the other way and then stealth kill the guard with his bare hands. This got a bit of blood on his hands, but WIlliam didn't care too much about that.

Picking up the large gun (a Jerrison .44 their world's Desert Eagle .44), William went on to free the dog and the wolf, who thanked him and ran off in the opposite direction of the other hostage locations. Unfortunately this gun didn't have a silencer, so William tried to only use it at most needed times. Even more unfortunately, that was all the time, so stealth was almost completely out of the question.

Ducking, William looked around a corner, and fired 2 rounds at a hostage guard, and blood exploded from the guy's face. "What was that?" A second guard turned around in fear, not knowing where the gunfire came from, thus giving WIlliam a perfect shot without being see. Another headshot later, the guard fell down. This time, the hostage was Jerry. "Hey man, I was wondering if you'd come around! Hey, I'd better tag along with you, so someone doesn't freak out and give you away before you shoot those soldiers!"

"Err, you sure? You know what you're even doing?" William was a little skeptical on letting the cat join him, especially since stealth worked better with only one person in a smaller setting, like this cave maze.

"Hey, I also know where to go, unlike you, who'd be running circles finding the next hostage!"

"True..." WIlliam couldn't really deny this, so he decided to let Jerry follow, "okay, just stick close and don't get yourself killed. If you need a weapon, there's tha one right there."

Shaking his head, Jerry refused, "I don't use guns that well. I'd be more likely to miss and hit one of my friends."

"Okay, suit yourself. I'm taking the extra ammo then," Wiilliam shrugged and took the clip out of the pistol and added it to his inventory. It fit nicely on his belt, and didn't even hinder William's movements.

"Come on! Hurry up Will! They'll kill another if we don't hurry!" Jerry began to try to hurry William.

"They've killed one already?"

"Yeah, they got to Victor just as they stormed the place!"

"Damn them..." William cursed the soldiers and he moved on, with Jerry tagging along closely, just like he was told to do. William winced as he moved his arm once more, the painkillers now starting to fully affect his pained arm.


	4. Conflict Escalating

Through the Fire and the Flames

Chapter 4

---

Jerry paled as he and William walked around the cavern, looking for more of the hostages that the soldiers had taken. The dead body of his friend Victor lay lifeless, and bloody, right in front of him, bullet holes all in his head and chest. Will, as Jerry started to nickname William, was peeking around a corner ahead of them, while Jerry was silently crying over Victor's body.

"He was a good friend and emeber of our resistance. Victor, you will be missed, and I'll personally make sure we take the emprire down..." Jerry stood up and followed after Will, who began to go around the corner, seeing no one there. "Hey, we need to go left at the next intersection if you want to go to the lower levels of the cave."

"Okay, but we still need to get some more ammo so I can keep shooting. I've only got 3 clips, and only part of the 3rd one. I think," William said as he got to the intersection. "Where's any type of armory?"

"There is none, we don't use weapons often. It's just that way for us."

"Oh, I see..." _Well, that makes thinkgs that much harder for me..._

William got to the intersection and followed Jerry's advice to go to the lower floors. The cave got a lot darker, and the lighting became much more sparse, making it hard to see much of anything. "Why is there no lighting here?"

"This is the control level, and we only lit the main control room to make it harder to get around here for intruders, but I think the soldiers have infrared vision in this area now," Jerry explained. William nodded and continued along the darkened path.

William spotted another hostage, and 3 soldiers guarding her. Quickly William saw the guards had infrared vision goggles on and each had also a silenced sub machine gun with them. William shot the first in the head, blood splattering on the others goggles, rendering them blind in the darkness, and he used this time to shoot them in the heads also, making sure not to hit the goggles on their heads. The hostage screamed in pure fright, and attempted to run away, right towards William and Jerry.

"Hey Cicilia! It me! Jerry, along with a friend. Get out of here NOW!" Jerry directed the young female anthro, and she left quickly. "They probably heard the shots and her scream, so we'd better watch out even more..."

William rushed into the room and killed another guard before he had the time to wipe the blood off his goggles and the guard fell instantly. Apparently he was hiding from the view of the room entrance. William picked up the goggles from the one guard who didn't get blood on his googles, the first one he shot, and grabbed the gun he held, the silenced SJ-62 9MM SMG.

SJ-62's were common for attack teams, and William picked up the remaining clips on each guard. This left William with 7 fresh clips and 3 partially used ones, which he loaded in the empty clip to make it where he had 9 fresh clips and one clip with 5 bullets left. In other words, he had 275 bullets for the SJ-62, and approximately 14 for his Jerrsion .44.

He wiped off the remaining blood on the goggles left and gave one set to Jerry and kept the other 2 for later use. "I think the control room is to the left now... It's the only room with a door in the way, but I don't have the keycard to the door. Only Wes and a few others have it. I didn't see Victor having his keycard, so one of these guards have it here somewhere."

"At least that helps out..." William replied as he searched the dead guards. And sure enough, he found a keycard on one of them. "Ah, here it is..."

William let Jerry lead the way to the room, and he quickly found the room using the IR goggles. Inserting the keycard, William prepared himself for what lay next to the other side of the door. The door split open and William ducked behind the wall, checking for voices. Oddly, he heard none. He stepped in the room, and only saw what looked like a normal room. At least one for being in a cave and being lit for once. "Is anyone here?"

William's voice projected back at him and Jerry, who entered after Wiliam had gone in without any resistance. "Why's no one here? I'd think they'd have at least one or two more hostages in here... What with there being 3 guards for the door and a single hostage."

"I think there's something here. You hear that beeping?" William turned towards the source of the noise, and walked towards wherever it was.

"Uh, what beeping?" Jerry asked in confusion.

"Stop, and listen!"

Beep, beep, beep, beep...

"Oh, that beeping... wonder what it is?"

William facepalmed. "This is the lowest section of the facility, right?"

"Uh, duh..." Jerry looked at William weirdly, "What?"

"You know what that means if there's beeping in the bottom of a cave that had only a few hostages?" William attempted to get Jerry to catch his point, but Jerry didn't understand.

"How should I know?"

"It means that... THERE'S A BOMB ABOUT TO BLOW!" William yelled at Jerry, who now understood fully of the situation. "Move!"

Jerry didn't need to be told twice, he ran for his life. "AAAAHHHHHHHHH!"

"You don't need to yell when you run... in fact, that makes you slower!" William shouted to Jerry and Jerry stopped his yell.

Behind them, the bomb in the control room beeped 4 more times, and then it exploded violently, causing the room to collapse, and the collapse began to spread into the hallway, and to follow the path it encased. And that exactly where William and Jerry were.

The cave was catching to the duo as they rounded a corner back to the main floor, and was only 20 feet from crushing them, adn was catching them easily. The entrance to the cave was still over a hundred feet away, and their hopes to make it out the way were shattered when the door to the cave shut automatically from a rockslide that was triggered by the explosion.

"No!" William shouted at the rocks that now blocked the exit. They reached the end of the tunnel, and turned to meet the impending doom of the rocks...


	5. Discoveries

Through the Fire and the Flames

Chapter 5

---

Previously in chapter 4:

The cave was catching to the duo as they rounded a corner back to the main floor, and was only 20 feet from crushing them, adn was catching them easily. The entrance to the cave was still over a hundred feet away, and their hopes to make it out the way were shattered when the door to the cave shut automatically from a rockslide that was triggered by the explosion.

"No!" William shouted at the rocks that now blocked the exit. They reached the end of the tunnel, and turned to meet the impending doom of the rocks...

---

Blackness. William could only see total blackness, and only was feeling pain in his body. Jerry was feeling the exact same kind of pain too. Both were trapped under the rocks as the cave had collapsed when the bomb exploded. The only thing to save the two was seemingly luck, since the rocks only caught their bodies, but not their heads. Even more fortunately, no bones were broken from the rocks crushing them into a tight space of air that led to the outside of the cave.

"Anyone there?" Jerry called out, right into William's ear.

"Yeah, I'm alive. Just alive..." William tried to move, but the rocks were too closely packed together to allow more than a move of the head in 45 degrees total. William's guns were probably destroyed in the rocks, along with the IR goggles, and it took a minute for William to be able to see somewhat from the light emmited from a small gap in the rocks.

"They're looking for us, I know it. They didn't see us escape, so I know they'd have to search for us! Wes never gives up on his teammates! At least, not yet," Jerry sighed as he got his eyes to adjust to the dimness.

" I think I hear something!" William said suddenly. Sure enough, they were hearing some yelling. It sounded like Carie, the lion nurse William met earlier, and someone else.

--

"They're dead! No one could have survived that cave in Carie! I'm sorry, but get over it!" An echidna was yelling at a sobbing Carie.

"No, they can't be... they survived. We have to look for them! Please, just search one more time... If not, I'll do it myself," Carie cried out.

"I know how it feels, now we can't waste anymore time! We need to move, now! Before we get seen preferably..." The guy began to walk off towards a group.

"Fine then Knuckles. I'm staying to search for them!" Carie stood up and walked to the cave entrance, and she began to dig for the two trapped people, not even knowing if it was worth it.

--

"Hey, someone's nearby! HEY!" Jerry yelled at the top of his lungs, and so did William.

--

"hey..." Carie heard voices from inside the rubble, and she quickly tried to yell back.

"Hey guys! Someone's alive!" Carie turned around to see... no one. They group had left already. "No... just when I finally find them." Carie began to dig faster for the duo, until she finally made a hole large enough to see some actual progress.

--

A bit more light poured into the small gap, and the 2 looked at each other with smiles of relieve.

--

Carie was digging as fast as she could, tiring herself out quickly, but she kept going. The entrance became more visible, until she saw the head of Jerry. "You're alive!" She squealed in delight and she began to dig more rocks out of the way, eventually digging out William's head and most of the two's bodies.

William attempted to move his arms to get rid of more rocks, and got himself freed quicker than Jerry had gotten with Carie getting him out. "I never thought I'd have been able to get out of thre alive..." Jerry said as he stood up, wobbling a litle with the weakness of not having moved at all for over 15 minutes.

"Yeah, and I thought I would never find you guys! I knew you guys were there, but no one believed me, and... they left without me," Carie began to sob a bit more.

"Hey, it's okay, we'll just follow them to where ever they went!" William said as he got up, nearly falling over in the process.

"Where were the others heading?" Jerry stumbled around until he finally just sat on a rock.

"I think it was to Surobolski, but I'm not sure. That's the only place I could think of, unles I'm skipping over another place that is more likely. I'm sorry, I didn't get to hear where they were heading, they just left without me..." Carie looked in the general direction of where they had headed to, which had infact led to Surobolski.

"What in the hell is Surobolski?" William just asked, completely out of the loop.

"Surobolski is a mountain based bunker we had to build as a last defense in case of previous bases being overrun. It's a max security bunker designed purely for defensive purposes, and is the best one in the entire continent. It's large enough to contain all of the group from this base and everyone else from the other bases."

"We were forced to start using actual bases after we were left too open to attack, and that's when we formed this entire new system to protect ourselves while we did attack the Empire. Unfortunately, they must have been tipped off to this one, so our group left for Surobolski. Each group is to go to Surobolski when their base is overrun, and the group is able to escape. Our group will be expected since we were able to relay a message that we were attacked." Carie finished. William began to piece together some more pieces in his mind, and he soon found a flaw.

"What if Surobolski is overrun?"

"Nothing. We'd have to go to the old system and just hope it works this time around. We were being detected too easily, which is why we went to the base system in the first place," Jerry explained as he sat on the rock, gaining his energy back.

"Stuck in a cycle of never knowing... Just like me..." William murmured.

"What?" Carie heard him slightly.

"Nothing. I have some conflicts of my own that I have to take care of too... The nuclear facility is the answer. The only way I can ever figure a way to get the truth is that facility. But, we have to go make sure no one follows Wes to that Surobolski bunker, or else it might be destroyed if they know about it!" William suddenly began to walk towards where the group had left.

"Hey, wait for me!" Carie rushed after William.

"And me!" Jerry jumped up and chased after the 2 ahead of him.


End file.
